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What a weird article. He admits climate change is real and we need to do something about it... but the main problem is the media, which is trying to claim clim

by jmull 7y ago

What a weird article. He admits climate change is real and we need to do something about it... but the main problem is the media, which is trying to claim climate change is real and we need to do something about it, but they are too scary about it. He thinks it's going to go pretty smoothly building dykes to keep our cities from flooding so the media should not be making big deal out of it. It's not a logical argument to me. Building dykes to product numerous coastal areas may well be a good answer, but in aggregate that is an absolutely massive capital project. Media reports will obviously need to be part of that since people will need to understand why their taxes are going up and why the government is taking their land. He also drops this doozy: "The real solution is to lift the world’s poorest out of poverty..." Oh, OK, so it's that's simple then. /s Frankly, I think this is just a somewhat subtler form of climate change denial. He acknowledges the problem, but then hand-waves the problem away and blames the media. He might as well be saying we'll use the magic crystals to solve our problems.

davedx 7y ago
Indeed. It's true that large parts of the Netherlands are below sea level. The reason we're safe here now is because a catastrophic storm in the 50's killed a lot of people and the government of this rich nation decided to invest in a gigantic public works project to protect the population. The Deltaworks project is pretty incredible (there's a great museum here all about it). But it certainly wasn't cheap or easy. "Though officially completed in 1997 at the cost of $7 billion, the Netherlands continues to add infrastructure to the Delta works as needed. It is estimated that it will continue to need construction to protect the area against the rising water levels caused by global warming." [1] The Dutch public infrastructure department, the Rijkswaterstaat, is called the "Ministry of Infrastructure and Water Management". Water management is a huge continuing challenge. [1] http://www.unmuseum.org/7wonders/zunderzee.htm http://www.unmuseum.org/7wonders/zunderzee.htm [2] https://www.rijkswaterstaat.nl/english https://www.rijkswaterstaat.nl/english
- holstvoogd 7y ago
  Since I just did the math: Spending was up to $13 billion in 2013. Based on that, securing all the coast lines of the world to that level will cost over $10 trillion. And I'm pretty sure by 2050 we will have spend a lot more on updating & maintaining the delta works.
  - ohyes 7y ago
    I wonder how much concrete a 10 trillion dollar levy solution will use, and how much that concrete will increase global warming.
  - xorfish 7y ago
    Was that 13 billion per year or in total? So I looked it up, it is 13 billion in total or 1.4% of the yearly GDP of the Netherlands. That seems rather affordable to me.
  - rhino369 7y ago
    You don't need to secure all the coast lines. Only the parts that are worth saving.
- boudin 7y ago
  This work is also highly specific to the Netherlands. It also have a really negative impact on the environment that now needs (and starts) to be addressed. The goal of this project was to address flooding (and is impressive in this regard), but not to solve any environmental issue and even less to address all the repercussions of global warming. Where the point of the guy who wrote this article falls even shorter than it already is, Delta Works needs massive funding to address sea water rise caused by Global Warming as it currently can't handle current predicted scenarios.
roenxi 7y ago
> He also drops this doozy: "The real solution is to lift the world’s poorest out of poverty..." > Oh, OK, so it's that's simple then. /s Cheap fossil fuels since the 1800s are the major driver of all the exponential growth assumptions in economic models. That and improved technology; but the technology all required cheap energy. "Mine more fossil fuels and try to power through" is a strategy that could work. I don't think it will because I doubt we have enough fossil fuels (I'm a peak-oil-ist at heart) but the idea isn't so crazy that it can't be talked about. It is a pretty fair thing to point out that focusing on cheap and abundant prosperity might be a better strategy than direct mitigation. I enjoy bringing up France, which has a pretty reasonable approximation of a carbon free electricity grid for military reasons; whereas the German Energiewende (bringing in solar and wind) has so far failed to meaningfully reduce carbon emissions and I think they have some sort of gas pipeline to Russia in the works.
- hootbootscoot 7y ago
  It would be extreme negligence to proceed with powering further growth with fossil fuels. We know this. The oil companies paid for some of the first confirmational research on the topic nearly 40 years ago. C'mon, spare me your glazed-eye zealotry for cultural memes that will get us all killed. Show me that you are an adult human capable of exercising judgement and leadership. And no, your statement about "solar and wind failing meaningfully to reduce carbon emissions" is not correct. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Renewable_energy_in_Germany https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Renewable_energy_in_Germany Renewables account for 38%, as of 2017 (likely higher by now) and this is clearly an upward, vs downward trend. They are on target, per their pledged Paris Agreement goals. (Compared to the US, in which renewables make up between 8 and 10% of the grid, albeit achieved by purely market forces in the face of reverse incentives (the US subsidizes fossil fuels and currently penalizes renewables in many ways, thanks Trump)) You stand corrected.
- jmull 7y ago
  I certainly like the idea of focusing on abundant prosperity. But... (1) How? It's not like people haven't been trying to rid the world of poverty all along. It's useless to suggest this without better solutions than have/are already being attempted. (2) How does that solve the problems around climate change? The gap in the logic here is immense. This just changes the subject away from climate change to something else.
SapporoChris 7y ago
I agree with your points, but I admit I also suffer confusion regarding climate change. I agree it's real, I'm willing to do some things about it, but I'm not willing to go crazy. I look at https://co2.myclimate.org/en/portfolios?calculation_id=2933013&localized_currency=USD https://co2.myclimate.org/en/portfolios?calculation_id=29330... and I see that 8.4 t CO2 is about average for EU citizens and rough estimate would cost easily less than $300 USD per citizen, sorry for mixing regional numbers. If this is accurate, then it seems the cost of doing eliminating CO2 globally equals around 6billion people * $300. $1.8 trillion dollars, that feels like an absurdly low number.
- hootbootscoot 7y ago
  Go crazy. You should be willing to spend approx 100% of your capital in any form for a thing called "survival of human civilization". Your money means nothing without other humans to spend it with.
  - hootbootscoot 7y ago
    Let me know when you arrive at hard numbers for carbon sequestration tech. OTOH, one could consider revamping entirely wasteful entirely stupidly designed industrial processes in favor of ones that don't put our entire civilization at risk. There will be no markets if civilization collapses.
    - tunap 7y ago
      I believe the point of the "media problem" lies in your response, as well. While I agree, I would use the less judgemental adjectives "inefficient" & "archaic". Edit: removed my own judgement.
  - friedman23 7y ago
    >You should be willing to spend approx 100% of your capital in any form for a thing called "survival of human civilization" This is ridiculous.
  - jmull 7y ago
Roark66 7y ago
>He admits climate change is real and we need to do something about it... but the main problem is the media, which is trying to claim climate change is real and we need to do something about it, but they are too scary about it. My understanding of it is a bit different. He disagrees with the impact of climate change as described by mass media. He also disagrees with how the problem should be addressed. In my opinion there is definitely a lot of hyperbole in describing climate change consequences as well as talking about what can be done to deal with it. One example is the "green new deal" proposed by few US senators. It aims to amongst other things replace all internal combustion cars in US, replace _all_ power generation with renewables and to make _all_ buildings in US net zero emissions in next 12 years. This is clearly impossible, but it goes on, one of the many goals for those 12 years in addition to replacing all the vehicles and upgrading all buildings in US is "jobs with guaranteed living wage provided to everyone by the federal government". There are other things in there (single payer healthcare etc) that could be achieved, but by lumping them into one document with impossibilities authors ensure none of them will actually be achieved. Bear in mind this is not a wish list, or some sort of statement of direction. That would be fine. It is fairly normal to aim high when setting overall strategies, but this proposal is something that would be put into law and would be expected to be fulfilled in 100%. If this is not the best example of applied climate change hysteria I don't know what is.
- jmull 7y ago
  I guess there are different "green new deal"s floating around? The one AOC famously supports, which I think is what people are usually referring to these days, doesn't have some of the hard provisions you're talking about. Here's a nice rundown if you're interested: https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2019/02/11/whats-actually-green-new-deal-democrats/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2019/02/11/whats-act... Also, it is actually an aspirational statement of direction. It's just a resolution and doesn't, e.g, change any laws or allocate any funds, etc. So I think you've got some bad information about the fundamentals of it. (BTW, I'm not myself a supporter of the green new deal. I agree with most of the goals, but it's a marketing effort, not a plan. As such, I think is going to fail and will make it less likely the goals will be achieves or cause them to be achieved less well.)
leftyted 7y ago
The article points to a specific instance in which, it argues, the NYT has misled on climate change. Are you disputing that instance? Or are you okay with the NYT misleading if you think it's for a good cause? I think this is where a lot of the pushback regarding climate change comes from. Saying "Southern Vietname will be underwater" is not the same as saying "Southern Vietnam will be below sea level". That kind of jump, when it happens over and over again, only results in people mistrusting the media (and, by proxy, "scientists"). > Building dykes to product numerous coastal areas may well be a good answer, but in aggregate that is an absolutely massive capital project. Media reports will obviously need to be part of that since people will need to understand why their taxes are going up and why the government is taking their land. I think that this comes down to a difference between you and Lomborg's perception of how large groups of people solve problems. It's top-down/central planning vs. distributed. I think I'm usually on Lomborg's side: I expect that people will solve these problems (rising sea levels) in fits and starts, as people's lives become more and more affected. I suspect that any other approach isn't politically feasible (and is also, perhaps, undesirable). Once you acknowledge this perspective, quotes like "the real solution is to lift the world’s poorest out of poverty" start to make more sense. I understand this perspective is dissatisfying to many people, especially scientifically-minded, highly educated people. But I don't see any way around it.
- jmull 7y ago
  Well, that times article actually does point out that building seawalls and other barriers is the way to protect the areas that will be below sea level, so Lomborg and the Times seems to share a lot of common ground on this. > I think that this comes down to a difference between you and Lomborg's perception of how large groups of people solve problems. It's top-down/central planning vs. distributed. No. I don't care whether there's a top-down or bottom up solution. My point talking about taxes and land was actually about the importance of the media in informing people about the problem. I only mentioned taxes and eminent domain because that's how large capital project usually work. If there's a bottom up way that will get the job done better, I'm all for it. Point is, the media is still important for informing people. If they don't understand what's going on they won't have any reason to do anything. No matter how it's done, it's going to require large amounts of resources and people aren't going to expend them without a reason. > I understand this perspective is dissatisfying... I wouldn't say dissatisfying. It's just a meaningless approach. We have been and continue to work to eliminate poverty and I fully agree we should keep doing so. Great. Now let's move on: how will we deal with the rising water levels around the globe? If it's build barriers, then how will that work? E.g., what will it cost? Who will do it? When do they need to start? Are there alternatives that may be cheaper or better?
jhoechtl 7y ago
> but in aggregate that is an absolutely massive capital project. Loke the marshal plan. It will create large amounts of wealth. Any time of upheaval is also a good time for wealth redistribution. All on all it might be a good thing.
perl4ever 7y ago
"but in aggregate that is an absolutely massive capital project" Some people think that the damage to the natural world from climate change cannot be measured in financial terms... ...but if you choose to talk about costs that can be measured, what makes you think the cost of adjusting to climate change is comparable to or more than the cost of preventing it? A long time ago, I wanted to put numbers on the externalities of a gallon of gasoline, and so I looked up an estimate of the costs of global warming (in 50-100 years) from the Natural Resources Defense Council. The amount was on the order of $3-6 per gallon. If you make the US and Venezuela pay European gas prices, it's not going to stop climate change. Of course, in 50 years, things could be much worse than expected. But the expectations of non-deniers are what they are, so it seem necessary to engage with the question of, what do we do if internalizing the costs is not enough to change the trajectory? And what should we do?

by jmull 7y ago

davedx 7y ago

Indeed. It's true that large parts of the Netherlands are below sea level. The reason we're safe here now is because a catastrophic storm in the 50's killed a lot of people and the government of this rich nation decided to invest in a gigantic public works project to protect the population. The Deltaworks project is pretty incredible (there's a great museum here all about it). But it certainly wasn't cheap or easy. "Though officially completed in 1997 at the cost of $7 billion, the Netherlands continues to add infrastructure to the Delta works as needed. It is estimated that it will continue to need construction to protect the area against the rising water levels caused by global warming." [1] The Dutch public infrastructure department, the Rijkswaterstaat, is called the "Ministry of Infrastructure and Water Management". Water management is a huge continuing challenge. [1] http://www.unmuseum.org/7wonders/zunderzee.htm http://www.unmuseum.org/7wonders/zunderzee.htm [2] https://www.rijkswaterstaat.nl/english https://www.rijkswaterstaat.nl/english

holstvoogd 7y ago
Since I just did the math: Spending was up to $13 billion in 2013. Based on that, securing all the coast lines of the world to that level will cost over $10 trillion. And I'm pretty sure by 2050 we will have spend a lot more on updating & maintaining the delta works.
- ohyes 7y ago
  I wonder how much concrete a 10 trillion dollar levy solution will use, and how much that concrete will increase global warming.
- xorfish 7y ago
  Was that 13 billion per year or in total? So I looked it up, it is 13 billion in total or 1.4% of the yearly GDP of the Netherlands. That seems rather affordable to me.
- rhino369 7y ago
  You don't need to secure all the coast lines. Only the parts that are worth saving.
boudin 7y ago
This work is also highly specific to the Netherlands. It also have a really negative impact on the environment that now needs (and starts) to be addressed. The goal of this project was to address flooding (and is impressive in this regard), but not to solve any environmental issue and even less to address all the repercussions of global warming. Where the point of the guy who wrote this article falls even shorter than it already is, Delta Works needs massive funding to address sea water rise caused by Global Warming as it currently can't handle current predicted scenarios.

roenxi 7y ago

> He also drops this doozy: "The real solution is to lift the world’s poorest out of poverty..." > Oh, OK, so it's that's simple then. /s Cheap fossil fuels since the 1800s are the major driver of all the exponential growth assumptions in economic models. That and improved technology; but the technology all required cheap energy. "Mine more fossil fuels and try to power through" is a strategy that could work. I don't think it will because I doubt we have enough fossil fuels (I'm a peak-oil-ist at heart) but the idea isn't so crazy that it can't be talked about. It is a pretty fair thing to point out that focusing on cheap and abundant prosperity might be a better strategy than direct mitigation. I enjoy bringing up France, which has a pretty reasonable approximation of a carbon free electricity grid for military reasons; whereas the German Energiewende (bringing in solar and wind) has so far failed to meaningfully reduce carbon emissions and I think they have some sort of gas pipeline to Russia in the works.

hootbootscoot 7y ago
It would be extreme negligence to proceed with powering further growth with fossil fuels. We know this. The oil companies paid for some of the first confirmational research on the topic nearly 40 years ago. C'mon, spare me your glazed-eye zealotry for cultural memes that will get us all killed. Show me that you are an adult human capable of exercising judgement and leadership. And no, your statement about "solar and wind failing meaningfully to reduce carbon emissions" is not correct. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Renewable_energy_in_Germany https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Renewable_energy_in_Germany Renewables account for 38%, as of 2017 (likely higher by now) and this is clearly an upward, vs downward trend. They are on target, per their pledged Paris Agreement goals. (Compared to the US, in which renewables make up between 8 and 10% of the grid, albeit achieved by purely market forces in the face of reverse incentives (the US subsidizes fossil fuels and currently penalizes renewables in many ways, thanks Trump)) You stand corrected.
jmull 7y ago
I certainly like the idea of focusing on abundant prosperity. But... (1) How? It's not like people haven't been trying to rid the world of poverty all along. It's useless to suggest this without better solutions than have/are already being attempted. (2) How does that solve the problems around climate change? The gap in the logic here is immense. This just changes the subject away from climate change to something else.

SapporoChris 7y ago

I agree with your points, but I admit I also suffer confusion regarding climate change. I agree it's real, I'm willing to do some things about it, but I'm not willing to go crazy. I look at https://co2.myclimate.org/en/portfolios?calculation_id=2933013&localized_currency=USD https://co2.myclimate.org/en/portfolios?calculation_id=29330... and I see that 8.4 t CO2 is about average for EU citizens and rough estimate would cost easily less than $300 USD per citizen, sorry for mixing regional numbers. If this is accurate, then it seems the cost of doing eliminating CO2 globally equals around 6billion people * $300. $1.8 trillion dollars, that feels like an absurdly low number.

hootbootscoot 7y ago
Go crazy. You should be willing to spend approx 100% of your capital in any form for a thing called "survival of human civilization". Your money means nothing without other humans to spend it with.
- hootbootscoot 7y ago
  Let me know when you arrive at hard numbers for carbon sequestration tech. OTOH, one could consider revamping entirely wasteful entirely stupidly designed industrial processes in favor of ones that don't put our entire civilization at risk. There will be no markets if civilization collapses.
  - tunap 7y ago
    I believe the point of the "media problem" lies in your response, as well. While I agree, I would use the less judgemental adjectives "inefficient" & "archaic". Edit: removed my own judgement.
- friedman23 7y ago
  >You should be willing to spend approx 100% of your capital in any form for a thing called "survival of human civilization" This is ridiculous.
- jmull 7y ago

Roark66 7y ago

>He admits climate change is real and we need to do something about it... but the main problem is the media, which is trying to claim climate change is real and we need to do something about it, but they are too scary about it. My understanding of it is a bit different. He disagrees with the impact of climate change as described by mass media. He also disagrees with how the problem should be addressed. In my opinion there is definitely a lot of hyperbole in describing climate change consequences as well as talking about what can be done to deal with it. One example is the "green new deal" proposed by few US senators. It aims to amongst other things replace all internal combustion cars in US, replace _all_ power generation with renewables and to make _all_ buildings in US net zero emissions in next 12 years. This is clearly impossible, but it goes on, one of the many goals for those 12 years in addition to replacing all the vehicles and upgrading all buildings in US is "jobs with guaranteed living wage provided to everyone by the federal government". There are other things in there (single payer healthcare etc) that could be achieved, but by lumping them into one document with impossibilities authors ensure none of them will actually be achieved. Bear in mind this is not a wish list, or some sort of statement of direction. That would be fine. It is fairly normal to aim high when setting overall strategies, but this proposal is something that would be put into law and would be expected to be fulfilled in 100%. If this is not the best example of applied climate change hysteria I don't know what is.

jmull 7y ago
I guess there are different "green new deal"s floating around? The one AOC famously supports, which I think is what people are usually referring to these days, doesn't have some of the hard provisions you're talking about. Here's a nice rundown if you're interested: https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2019/02/11/whats-actually-green-new-deal-democrats/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2019/02/11/whats-act... Also, it is actually an aspirational statement of direction. It's just a resolution and doesn't, e.g, change any laws or allocate any funds, etc. So I think you've got some bad information about the fundamentals of it. (BTW, I'm not myself a supporter of the green new deal. I agree with most of the goals, but it's a marketing effort, not a plan. As such, I think is going to fail and will make it less likely the goals will be achieves or cause them to be achieved less well.)

leftyted 7y ago

The article points to a specific instance in which, it argues, the NYT has misled on climate change. Are you disputing that instance? Or are you okay with the NYT misleading if you think it's for a good cause? I think this is where a lot of the pushback regarding climate change comes from. Saying "Southern Vietname will be underwater" is not the same as saying "Southern Vietnam will be below sea level". That kind of jump, when it happens over and over again, only results in people mistrusting the media (and, by proxy, "scientists"). > Building dykes to product numerous coastal areas may well be a good answer, but in aggregate that is an absolutely massive capital project. Media reports will obviously need to be part of that since people will need to understand why their taxes are going up and why the government is taking their land. I think that this comes down to a difference between you and Lomborg's perception of how large groups of people solve problems. It's top-down/central planning vs. distributed. I think I'm usually on Lomborg's side: I expect that people will solve these problems (rising sea levels) in fits and starts, as people's lives become more and more affected. I suspect that any other approach isn't politically feasible (and is also, perhaps, undesirable). Once you acknowledge this perspective, quotes like "the real solution is to lift the world’s poorest out of poverty" start to make more sense. I understand this perspective is dissatisfying to many people, especially scientifically-minded, highly educated people. But I don't see any way around it.

jmull 7y ago
Well, that times article actually does point out that building seawalls and other barriers is the way to protect the areas that will be below sea level, so Lomborg and the Times seems to share a lot of common ground on this. > I think that this comes down to a difference between you and Lomborg's perception of how large groups of people solve problems. It's top-down/central planning vs. distributed. No. I don't care whether there's a top-down or bottom up solution. My point talking about taxes and land was actually about the importance of the media in informing people about the problem. I only mentioned taxes and eminent domain because that's how large capital project usually work. If there's a bottom up way that will get the job done better, I'm all for it. Point is, the media is still important for informing people. If they don't understand what's going on they won't have any reason to do anything. No matter how it's done, it's going to require large amounts of resources and people aren't going to expend them without a reason. > I understand this perspective is dissatisfying... I wouldn't say dissatisfying. It's just a meaningless approach. We have been and continue to work to eliminate poverty and I fully agree we should keep doing so. Great. Now let's move on: how will we deal with the rising water levels around the globe? If it's build barriers, then how will that work? E.g., what will it cost? Who will do it? When do they need to start? Are there alternatives that may be cheaper or better?

jhoechtl 7y ago

> but in aggregate that is an absolutely massive capital project. Loke the marshal plan. It will create large amounts of wealth. Any time of upheaval is also a good time for wealth redistribution. All on all it might be a good thing.

perl4ever 7y ago

"but in aggregate that is an absolutely massive capital project" Some people think that the damage to the natural world from climate change cannot be measured in financial terms... ...but if you choose to talk about costs that can be measured, what makes you think the cost of adjusting to climate change is comparable to or more than the cost of preventing it? A long time ago, I wanted to put numbers on the externalities of a gallon of gasoline, and so I looked up an estimate of the costs of global warming (in 50-100 years) from the Natural Resources Defense Council. The amount was on the order of $3-6 per gallon. If you make the US and Venezuela pay European gas prices, it's not going to stop climate change. Of course, in 50 years, things could be much worse than expected. But the expectations of non-deniers are what they are, so it seem necessary to engage with the question of, what do we do if internalizing the costs is not enough to change the trajectory? And what should we do?